Venturing into the local history through the literary scape of 'Parlapadu', a village of poets

Abstract

This paper attempts to explore the literary works of the poets of Parlapadu to understand the local history of this village and its neighbouring territory. Parlapadu is a tiny village with a remarkable history. It is situated in Rajupalem Mandal of Kadapa district. From 19th Century onwards this village could produce many literary giants that even the towns and cities with sizable population could not bring forth. Their writings have a varied range from simple moral teachings to complex poetic works based on metrics and dealt with the spiritual quests as well, experimenting with all forms of literary writing like Harikatha, novel, play, articles, stories and also include translations from Sanskrit into Telugu. This paper tries to study the socio, cultural aspects of local history as reflected in their versatile literary works and present the causes that supported and encouraged the educational and social mobility of rural population particularly from Parlapadu towards the places of higher education, social prestige, recognition at royal courts.